It’s been out for a while now (New May 2013) and no doubt you’ve seen it on your social media. Coke have created a set of limited edition bottles which have your name on the bottle.

Well, not just your name. All of our names! The idea being you can see you friend’s name, buy them a Coke and share some happiness. Here’s what Coke have to say about it on their YouTube Channel:

This summer we’re swapping our name with yours. We’re replacing the iconic Coca-Cola logo on some of our bottles with 150 of Great Britain’s favourite names, so you can share a Coke with your friends, family and loved ones. So, who will you share a Coke with? #shareacoke

Not only is it fun, it works! And Coke are benefiting from free social media exposure by the boat load. And there’s more – all the shared pictures are happy smiling faces of  people who’ve been bought at Coke. Well today I got mine.

Obvious Marketing - Winning without needing to engage consumer effort in thought!

You, me and all our consumers think in two very different ways.

Did you know that if you create your marketing to appeal to one of these ways it is likely to be far more successful?

Can you believe that most people are still trying to design their marketing and communications to appeal to the other way of thinking?

Well, it’s true. And as part of my passionate campaign to encourage you to change your marketing and focus less on the clever and more on the obvious, in this post I’m introducing the Nobel Prize winning work of Professor Daniel Kahneman.

Professor Kahneman’s 2011 book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow” summarises decades of research which goes a long way to debunking that foundation of traditional economic thought, that humans are rational with their decision making.

Let’s take a look at the big idea in the book. While it may seem [..]

Brand Excellence Series: Staropramen - Differentiation through Provenance

This post is part of my series on “Brand Excellence” – learning from the best in class examples so we can reapply what really works.

Have you noticed how certain places are associated with great quality? France in general, and Paris in particular carry an instant association with luxury and high-end goods. Whether we are talking Louis Vuitton luggage or fine fragrance and couture from Chanel, the Paris provenance builds further caché into these super brands.

A more interesting example for me is how we associate the finest chocolate with Switzerland and Belgium, yet neither grow the raw material, cocoa. Their reputation has been built by their chocolatiers and their skills in production and craftsmanship. Italy, likewise is famed for its espresso, yet no coffee beans are grown on its soil. The brand power comes from the expertise and the appeal is strengthened by the expertly crafted and repeatedly told and reinforced story of the location.

Following this theme, I’m impressed with the example of the Staropramen brand, which centres its brand story on its brewing heritage at very heart of the Czech capital, Prague.

Beer, like so many categories has marketers deep in thought (sometimes despair   crying into their pints) as they try to find ways to effectively and ownably differentiate their product from that of their (often very similar) competition.

Yet in this UK press ad, the Staropramen brand makes the task seem simple. They cleverly build on the UK consumer’s idealised view of Prague and use the location in conjunction with the story of their enduring expertise to position an experience in the [..]